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In today's scene of restrictions and shrinking budgets, the need to identify new ways of collaboration in the provision of services of public interest becomes essential to maintain its quality in European cities. On the other hand, the growing societal demands to open the public information and public goods for its re-use opens new opportunities to explore other ways of offering public services that have been traditionally delivered by public administrations solely.

The iCity project aims at making a step forward in the co-creation of services of public interest by third parties (developers, small and medium enterprises,...) that are pushing for their space as service providers in the urban spaces of Smart Cities. The project intends to develop and deploy an approach to allow these interested parties to create, deploy, operate and exploit services based in the use of available public information, digital assets and infrastructures in cities. This represents a shift in the governance of cities and the concept upon which traditional public service delivery has been based.

The iCity project vision makes a step further on the concept of Open Data offering a novel approach of Open Infrastructures where the municipal ICT networks already deployed in urban spaces will be made available and accessible to the general public with the objective of maximizing the number of deployed services of public interest.

The services to be finally deployed will be developed by interested third parties who will be given access to public information and infrastructures through a shared technological platform integrated in the four participant cities (Barcelona, Bologna, Genova and London): the iCity platform.

Special care is given in this project to reach developers, entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises; the ecosystem that we believe is at the forefront of open innovation in cities. This will be done with the help of local promoters specialised in user engagement, like living labs.

In this sense, several local contests in every participant city will be organised to attract their attention and foster their use of the iCity solution for the development of services of public interest. Also, a Special Interest Group has been activated for those parties interested in closely following the development of the project and participating in its activities.

Main expected outputs

The iCity Platform that will give access to open information and infrastructures in the participant cities.

An ecosystem of services of public interest (mobile apps, web services…) created by interested third parties using the assets made available through the iCity Platform.

A new methodology for user engagement in the creation of services of public interest.